The Incorrigible Optimists Club is a huge, exhilarating whirlwind of first love, radical art, colonial war, progressive politics, Chuck Berry and chain-smoking intellectuals. Paris, 1959. As dusk settles over the immigrant quarter, 12-year-old Michel Marini - amateur photographer and compulsive reader - is drawn to the hum of the local bistro. From his usual position at the football table, he has a vantage point on a grown-up world - of rock 'n' roll and of the Algerian War. But as the sun sinks and the plastic players spin, Michel's concentration is not on the game, but on the huddle of men gathered in the shadows of a back room... Past the bar, behind a partly drawn curtain, a group of eastern European men gather, where under a cirrus of smoke and over the squares of chess boards, they tell of their lives before France - of lovers and wives, children and ambitions, all exiled behind the Iron Curtain. Listening to this band of survivors and raconteurs, Michel is introduced to a world beyond the boundaries of his childhood experience, a world of men made formidable in the face of history, ideas and politics: the world of the Incorrigible Optimists Club.

This volume critically examines the notion of a 'new' India by acknowledging that India is changing remarkably and by indicating that in the overzealous enthusiasm about the new India, there is collective amnesia about the other, older India. The book argues that the increasing consolidation of capitalist markets of commodity production and consumption has unleashed not only economic growth and social change, but has also introduced new contradictions associated with market dynamics in the material and social as well as intellectual spheres.

Almost Sixty Years Ago, Nehru Spoke Of India S Tryst With Destiny At The Dawn Of Independence. In The Constitution Of The New Republic That Was Framed A Few Years Later, The Goals And Values Of That Vision Were Unfolded. How Far Have We Progressed Since Then And What Is It That Destiny Now Holds For Tomorrow S India? The Present Volume Of Essays Surveys The Scene Past-Forward And Paints A Picture Of What Has Been Accomplished And What Remains To Be Done. There Is Pride And Satisfaction In Particular Over India S Vibrant Democracy And Progress In Many Directions. This Is Nonetheless Tinged With Concern, For There Are Nagging Problems Of Governance And Shortfalls In Human And Infrastructure Development, As Well As Social Deficits In The Matter Of Rights, Corruption And Sectoral And Regional Imbalances. All These Must Be Squarely Faced And Speedily Overcome If The Nation Is To Grow In Keeping With Its Increasingly Recognized Potential As A Rising Great Power. It Has Been Widely Forecast That Within Thirty Years India, Together With The United States And China, Will Constitute The Three Largest Economies In The World. The Wellsprings Of Growth Are There. However, As More Than One Author Points Out, Mere Economic And Technological Growth Is Not Enough. In This Globalizing World The Market Is Not All. The Citizen Must March Hand In Hand With The Consumer In A Sharing And Caring Society. The Twenty-Four Essayists Who Write Of Tomorrow S India Do So In Celebration Of The 125Th Anniversary Of Their Alma Mater, Delhi S St Stephen S College. Their Themes Relate To Diplomacy And Security; The Economy And Technology; Governance; Society S Watchdogs; Ideology And Values; Social Change; And Culture And Heritage. The Authors Represent A Galaxy Of Public Figures, Academics, Professionals And Social Workers. What They Have To Say Makes Compelling Reading, With Penetrating Insights And Critiques. Contributors Include George Abraham, Mani Shankar Aiyar, Rukmini Banerji, Ranjit Bhatia, Ravi Dayal, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, Sagarika Ghose, Navina Haidar Haykel, Prem Shankar Jha, Manoj Joshi, Mukul Kesavan, Arun Kumar, Sarwar Lateef, Arun Maira, Harsh Mander, Deepak Nayyar, Bunker Roy, Vikramjit Sen, Kapil Sibal, Dilip Simeon, K. Natwar Singh, N.K. Singh, B.G. Verghese And Sitaram Yechury

Executive editor: Susanne Heim; English-language edition prepared by: Caroline Pearce and Dorothy Mas This volume documents the persecution of the Jews in the German Reich between January 1938 and the end of August 1939. In the months between the Anschluss of Austria and the start of the Second World War, the Nazi leadership plunged Jewish life further into crisis. ‘Aryanization’, bureaucratically organized expulsions, and ultimately the pogrom in November 1938 meant that for more and more Jews, life was untenable. At the same time, it became increasingly difficult to emigrate. In the aftermath of the pogrom of 9 November 1938, Morris Troper from the Jewish aid organization JDC (Joint Distribution Committee) recorded: ‘What is to become of the Jews in the next few weeks is altogether uncertain. Even if the disorders and arrests come to an end, the basis of the existence of German Jewry has been wiped out.’ Learn more about the PMJ on https://pmj-documents.org/

Lectures delivered during 2005-06 at Hyderabad by eminent scholars; some were revised.

Chess is a cruel game. We all know that feeling when your position has gone awry and everything seems hopeless. You feel like resigning. But don’t give up! This is precisely the moment to switch to swindle mode. Master the art of provoking errors and you will be able to turn the tables and escape with a draw – or sometimes even steal the full point! Swindling is a skill that can be trained. In this book, David Smerdon shows how you can use tricks from psychology to marshal hidden resources and exploit your opponent’s biases. In a lost position, your best practical chance often lies not in the computer’s best moves, but in playing your opponent – however bad the evaluation! With an abundance of eye-popping examples and training exercises, Smerdon identifies the four best friends of every chess swindler: your opponent’s impatience, their hubris, their fear, and their need to stay in control. You’ll also learn about such cunning swindling motifs as the Trojan Horse, the decoy trap, the berserk attack, and ‘window-ledging’. So, come and join the Swindlers’ Club, become a great escape artist and dramatically improve your results. In this instructive and wildly entertaining guide, Smerdon shows you how.

These chapters by eight Korea specialists present a new approach to human rights issues in Korea. Instead of using an external and purely contemporary standard, the authors work from within Korean history, treating the successive phases of Korea's modern century to examine the uneasy fate of human rights and some of the ideas of human rights as they have developed in the Korean context. Beginning with the Independence Club of the late nineteenth century and continuing through to the constitutional and judicial structures underlying the Sixth Republic Government of Roh Tae Woo in South Korea, these papers illuminate the sometimes complex interactions between modern Korean human-rights issues and the legacies of Korean culture and colonial occupation.The final sections deal with the usefulness and appropriateness of U.S. policies toward human rights in South Korea and comparatively with the overall issues raised in the volume.